Tareque Masud

Tareque Masud was born in Faridpur, Bangladesh in 1956. He was actively involved in the film society movement from his university days and started his first film Adam Surat, a documentary on the Bangladeshi painter S.M. Sultan, in 1982. His 1995 feature length documentary on the '71 Liberation War, Muktir Gaan brought record audiences and became a cult classic. He also made many other films on the War, including Muktir Kotha (1999), Narir Kotha (2000) and Naroshundor (2008). In 2002, his feature Matir Moina won the Critics’ Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and became the first Bangladesh film to compete in the Oscars. He was killed in a road accident on August 13, 2011, along with his long-time cinematographer and friend Mishuk Munier, while returning from work on his new film Kagojer Phul. He was a founding member of the Short Film Forum and organized the country’s first International Short and Documentary Film Festival.

Catherine Masud

Catherine Masud is an American-born independent filmmaker who has been living and working in Bangladesh for over 20 years. After the untimely passing of her life partner and filmmaking companion Tareque Masud in 2011, she has dedicated herself to the completion of their incomplete works and to archiving and memorializing her husband's legacy. To this end she has established the Tareque Masud Memorial Trust, through which a number of publications, DVDs, productions, and memorial site projects are underway.

Lear Levin

Lear Levin, a graduate of the USC Film School in California, went on to become a successful documentary and ad film maker. Notable documentaries include "Circus", a documentary on the renowned Barnum & Bailey Circus, and "Trade", about a heavyweight boxer. In 1971, Levin traveled to India and the then East Pakistan to shoot a film on the humanitarian crisis spawned by the Pakistan Army crackdown. He never completed his film, but his footage eventually became the basis for Tareque and Catherine Masud's "Muktir Gaan", completed 24 years later.